Modern video games continue to grow in depth and complexity. As is well known, a game console (such as the Sony Playstation 3 (PS3)) is designed to connect to a monitor (usually a television) and enable user interaction through handheld controllers. The game console is designed with specialized processing hardware, including a CPU, a graphics synthesizer for processing intensive graphics operations, a vector unit for performing geometry transformations, and other glue hardware, firmware, and software. The game console is further designed with an optical media drive for receiving optical media for local play through the game console. Online gaming is also possible, where a user can interactively play against or with other users over the Internet.
In a typical video game, a player directly controls a first-person character's actions, which may include movements and/or other activities such as firing a weapon. In other words, a player's inputs to the controllers are immediately transformed into actions taken by the first-person character in the video game. However, in more complex video games the first-person character may play alongside a number of artificial-intelligence (AI) characters, which may represent teammates or characters which are otherwise on the first-person character's side.
The actions of AI characters are typically automatically controlled by the game itself, and behave according to preset algorithms which are designed to generally provide actions which are beneficial to the first-person character. Thus, for example, in a battlefield-style game, AI characters will generally move about and engage enemy characters in combat. However, some video games have provided interfaces which enable a player to provide a certain amount of control over the actions of AI characters. Yet these prior art methods for controlling AI characters have been unintuitive and cumbersome to use, often presenting limited options to the player and removing him from the immersive experience of the gameplay in order to present an interface for providing commands for the AI characters.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for methods and systems that enable more advanced control of AI characters in a game. It is in this context that embodiments of the invention arise.